Overview

In 1963, Eugen Sänger, became head of the Eurospace organisation which promoted the 'AeroSpace Transporter'. In response to a Eurospace call, aircraft makers in France, Germany and UK designed recoverable, winged spacecraft. From 1964 to 1970 the French government led studies to evaluate the feasibility of the concept. Those studies, under the leadership of the French Centre National d'Etudes Spatiales (CNES), coalesced into the Hermes spaceplane which was then adopted by the European Space Agency. In parallel, Germany and UK proposed fully recoverable designs while other countries, including Japan, India and Russia came to CNES to share ideas about spaceplane design. Unfortunately Hermes was never launched and by 1994 was abandoned after many alternative propositions were discussed. This book relates the story of these remarkable concepts, crossovers between aircraft and spacecraft beginning with the 'antipodal bomber' of 1944 and continuing to Aerospatiale STS-2000 project through the Transporteur Aero-Spatial, VERAS, AW Pyramid, Bumerang, Sänger II, HOTOL, Hermes, and Taranis. Non-European projects like Dyna-Soar, Hyperplane, HOPE, and MAKS are also be covered. It provides a fascinating and detailed account of these projects which, being half-way between aircraft and spacecraft, have hitherto often been therefore often neglected by aviation writers and historians

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9781910809914

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Jean-Christophe Carbonel was born in 1959 and wrote his first modelling article in 1977. Since then, he has pursued a writing career specializing in model kit history and in the history of aviation projects, prototypes, and early experimenters. Jean-Christophe has more recently specialized in French designs of all eras. Writing for various magazines on both sides of the Channel, French Secret Projects is his first solo book for a British publisher.

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